When Dean emerges victorious from a battle, bruised and sometimes bleeding, slightly giddy from adrenaline, Sam's hands tremble as he cleans and tapes the wounds.

The warm, tanned skin beneath his fingers makes his heartbeat race, his pulse so loud he hardly hears Dean crowing out his victory.

The curve of neck and sweep of sharply angled shoulder blade invites the touch of tongue and lips and teeth. Sam resists.

The freckled knobs of spine that march from nape to waistband beg to feel the kiss and claw of nails along their route. Sam resists.

The fading scar across the arc of Dean's left hipbone, made by some unholy spirit's lash once meant for Sam, requests that homage should be paid with tears of gratitude, preferably from Sammy on his knees. Sam resists.

And then one night Dean isn't quite so victorious - he leaves a pint or so of blood behind him when he's done. The spirit's gone and the bones are turned to ash and dust, but Sam thinks he'll be seeing her for many years to come.

They can't afford another visit to a hospital - cash is running low and the plastic's all maxed out. Dean's already sent another bunch of applications in, but for now, they're on their own.

By the time they reach their shitty little motel room the bleeding's gone from terrifying gush to sluggish trickle… until Dean's jeans come off. At which point Sam is on his knees, helping ease the slashed up fabric over equally slashed up skin and trying not to notice Dean's cock a bare three inches from his nose.

Of course, at that, the blood starts flowing once again - slow and steady, sliding over razor-parted lips of flesh to paint a sinuous trail around Dean's knee and calf and ankle. It's obscenely beautiful in ways that Sam cannot accept and he bites his cheek until he tastes his own spilled blood.

Sam takes the last clean(ish) towel from the bathroom and then resorts to tearing up a sheet to staunch the flow of blood. It's dirty work, and he's smeared with it, hand and brow, the slightest trace of not mine on his lip before he licks it off to mingle with the traces of - Dean in me! - his own.

Then stitches, tiny, neat and perfect, closing the mouth that screamed for Sammy's touch so loud it deafened him to other thoughts.

Dean is motionless, zoned out on the pain, and the pain pills and the half a glass of whisky he's tossed back. He doesn't twitch when Sam ties the final knot in place and plants a dry kiss on the sculpture of his knee. He doesn't question Sam when he slides between his thighs and rests his head against Dean's smooth, toned belly.

But he does wonder at the damp sounds of tears and the brush of wetness slick across the scar on his hip. He knows he must remember this when he's awake.